Hospitals and clinics often face staffing shortages, making it challenging to provide consistent pediatric care.
Hiring locum tenens pediatricians offers a flexible solution, ensuring quality treatment without long-term commitments.
From reducing physician burnout to maintaining continuity of care, these temporary providers bring numerous advantages. This article outlines ten key benefits of incorporating locum tenens pediatricians into healthcare teams.
What Is a Locum Tenens Pediatrician?
A locum tenens pediatrician is a fully licensed pediatric physician who fills in temporarily when a hospital, clinic, or private practice needs coverage. The Latin term locum tenens means “to hold a place,” reflecting the role these doctors play in maintaining patient care during gaps in staffing.
Unlike permanent positions where a physician is a long-term hire, locum tenens positions are temporary assignments ranging from a few days to several months.
These pediatricians travel to different healthcare settings – from children’s hospitals and urgent care centers to rural clinics – providing medical services wherever there’s a need based on geographic location. They have the same qualifications as permanent staff physicians and often come with extensive clinical experience.
In fact, pediatricians fall into the primary care category that is among the most in-demand for locum tenens; 30% of healthcare facilities surveyed used locum tenens primary care doctors (including pediatricians) in 2019. In 2024, approximately 7% of physicians were locum tenens, as in 2022.
Healthcare facilities and systems rely on these locum tenens providers to ensure continuity of care for children when permanent providers are unavailable.
How do Locum Tenens Assignments Work?
In a locum tenens assignment, a healthcare organization contracts a physician (often via a locum tenens agency or staffing agencies) to work for a set period in place of a regular doctor. The process typically begins when a hospital or clinic identifies a staffing need – for example, a pediatrician going on leave or a vacant position in a pediatric unit.
The organization then contacts locum tenens recruiters at an agency, which provides a pool of available locum tenens physicians (including nurse practitioners or physician assistants for some roles) who match the requirements.
After the facility selects a candidate, the agency and facility coordinate licensing, hospital privileges, and scheduling. Travel expenses (airfare, lodging, mileage) and malpractice insurance are usually arranged and covered by the agency or included in the contract so the locum provider can quickly relocate to the new practice setting.
Most locum tenens clinicians are paid hourly rates or daily rates, often at a competitive pay rate to attract them for short-term work. The standard per diem rate is approximately $720. Notably, assignments can be very brief – the average length of a locum tenens assignment is just 16 days.
Many physicians pursue locum tenens opportunities to achieve flexibility or explore a variety of settings without a long-term commitment. For the hiring organization, this means a temporary position can be filled in as little as a few weeks from the initial request.
Insider tip: Establish a relationship with a reputable locum tenens agency in advance. This way, when you have an urgent need, your staffing partner already understands your facility’s preferences and can quickly line up a locum tenens professional – often expediting the start date by handling credentialing and logistics on your behalf.
Benefits of Hiring Locum Tenens Pediatricians
Let’s get into the advantages of hiring locum tenens pediatricians.
1) Enhanced Continuity of Care (Consistency for Patients)
Vacancies or absences in a pediatrics department can disrupt patient care, but locum tenens pediatricians provide a bridge that preserves continuity of care. By bringing in a qualified locum tenens provider promptly, hospitals and clinics avoid gaps in care – children can continue seeing a pediatrician for check-ups, treatment, and follow-ups without interruption.
Continuity is more than just convenience; it’s tied to better outcomes. Research indicates that maintaining continuous primary care is associated with higher-quality care and can prevent high-cost health encounters for pediatric patients.
Here’s a closer look at its benefits:
For example, a practice that hires a locum tenens pediatrician when its full-time provider is on parental leave ensures that childhood immunizations, chronic illness management, and growth monitoring stay on schedule. Families don’t have to seek care elsewhere or repeat their child’s history to new providers, which creates trust and consistency.
An experienced locum will also coordinate with your existing healthcare providers, updating permanent staff on any significant patient issues – thereby safeguarding the patient care continuum.
Whenever possible, it's helpful to arrange an overlap day between the outgoing pediatrician and the locum tenens pediatrician. A brief handoff (e.g. sharing patient notes or introducing the locum to complex cases) helps the locum integrate quickly and upholds seamless care to patients. This extra step can reassure parents that the temporary doctor is up to speed on their child’s needs.
2) Burnout Prevention for Full-Time Pediatricians
Hiring locum tenens pediatricians can dramatically improve your permanent staff’s work-life balance. Pediatricians, like many providers, face intense workloads and often cite burnout as one of their biggest challenges. In fact, 55% of pediatricians reported experiencing burnout in 2022.
Check out the video below for more insight on pediatrician burnout.
Utilizing locum tenens support allows your full-time providers to take their well-earned vacations, attend conferences, or simply reduce relentless overtime hours – all without leaving patients unattended. By giving your staff pediatricians time with family and time to recharge, you’re proactively addressing the factors that lead to burnout. This supports the individuals’ mental health and also improves quality of care.
For example, instead of asking your one pediatric hospitalist to cover every night on call for a month straight, you might bring in a locum tenens hospitalist for one week each month. The relief valve keeps your permanent staff from staffing shortage fatigue and lowers the risk of turnover. Industry leaders now view locum tenens as a strategic tool to retain physicians and manage burnout.
3) Fast Staffing Solution for Pediatrician Vacancies
When a pediatrician position suddenly opens – due to a resignation, illness, or maternity leave – finding a quick replacement is challenging. Traditional recruiting for a full-time position can take months (the physician shortage means candidates are scarce), but locum tenens hiring offers a rapid remedy.
Hospitals and clinics can often fill a pediatric role with a locum tenens provider in a fraction of the time it would take to hire a permanent doctor. Consider that the average time to fill a physician vacancy is about 140–220 days (5–7 months) in today’s market.
That’s time during which patient appointments might be backlogged or a hospital unit might be short-staffed. In contrast, locum tenens agencies maintain a roster of pre-vetted pediatricians who can be available on short notice.
A locum assignment can frequently start within a few weeks (or even days for urgent needs) because the locum provider might already hold the necessary state license or can be fast-tracked through credentialing. This speed is invaluable for maintaining department stability.
It’s important to calculate the cost of waiting versus acting. Each day a pediatric position sits unfilled can cost revenue and strain the remaining staff. Having a locum tenens recruiter on call means you can react immediately to unexpected vacancies.
Keep an updated job description and onboarding plan ready for locums – this preparedness helps staffing agencies identify suitable locum tenens clinicians and get them on board faster.
Cost of Waiting vs. Acting: Pediatrician Vacancies
📌 Step 1: Calculate daily revenue loss
▶️ Estimate the average revenue per pediatrician per day (based on past patient volume, insurance reimbursements, and procedures).
📌 Step 2: Assess patient impact & backlog costs
▶️Identify missed patient visits per day and potential loss in long-term patient retention due to appointment delays.
📌 Step 3: Factor in overtime & burnout costs
▶️Calculate additional pay for overworked staff covering extra shifts and the risk of staff burnout & turnover.
📌 Step 4: Compare time-to-hire
▶️Traditional hiring = 140–220 days (5–7 months).
▶️Locum tenens staffing = a few days to weeks.
▶️Multiply revenue loss by time-to-hire for total cost of delay.
📌 Step 5: Weigh against locum tenens cost
▶️Factor in locum provider hourly/daily rates + agency fees.
▶️Compare this short-term investment vs. long-term revenue loss from delays.
📌 Step 6: Decision point – act or wait?
▶️If cost of waiting exceeds locum tenens cost, immediate action saves revenue and prevents staff burnout.
4) Reduced Costs Compared to Full-Time Hires
At first glance, locum tenens pediatricians can seem expensive due to higher hourly rates, but they often save money when used appropriately. Hiring a permanent pediatrician carries significant hidden costs – recruitment advertising, signing bonuses, benefits (health insurance, retirement), paid leave, and more.
There’s also the financial impact of an empty position. Hospitals lose substantial revenue when services are closed or patient visits are delayed. The cost of vacancy for an unstaffed healthcare position averages about $8,000 per day in lost revenue
Over weeks or months, that lost income far exceeds the fees for a locum tenens provider. By promptly filling a gap with a locum tenens physician, a facility continues billing for patient visits, procedures, and consultations, thereby protecting its revenue stream. Additionally, you pay locums only for the time and services needed – there’s no long-term salary commitment if patient volume doesn’t justify it later.
For instance, rather than rushing to hire a full-time pediatrician during a temporary uptick in patient volume (and risking that the new hire may be underutilized later), a clinic can use a locum tenens pediatrician to handle the surge. There are also savings in administrative overhead: the locum’s staffing agency covers malpractice insurance and benefits, so the hospital is not bearing those expenses.
5) More Pediatric Care in Rural and Underserved Areas
Locum tenens pediatricians are often a lifeline for rural hospitals and clinics that struggle to recruit permanent providers. Smaller communities frequently face a staffing shortage of pediatric specialists – or even general pediatricians – due to their remote geographic location. The statistics are stark:
65% of primary care Health Professional Shortage Areas are in rural regions, yet only about 9% of U.S. physicians practice in rural areas.
By hiring locum tenens professionals, healthcare institutions in underserved areas can bring needed medical services to local children without waiting to fill a permanent position.
For example, a critical access hospital in a rural county might use locum tenens pediatricians on rotation to staff a weekly pediatric clinic or to provide on-call coverage for pediatric emergencies. This ensures families don’t have to drive hours to the nearest city for care.
Locum tenens providers often have a locum tenens lifestyle that embraces travel, meaning many are willing to go where they’re most needed. Some even view serving in underserved communities as part of their career goals or personal mission.
Moreover, locums can offer specialized care that a small facility wouldn’t normally have; imagine a locum pediatric cardiologist visiting a rural medical center once a month to run a cardiac clinic.
Insider tip: To attract locum tenens pediatricians to remote or underserved locations, highlight the unique professional experience and community impact your healthcare facility offers. Providing comfortable housing, covering travel, and pairing the locum with an enthusiastic local healthcare team can also make the locum tenens' role in a rural area more appealing.
Many advanced practice providers (like NPs and PAs) serve rural communities too, but having a locum tenens pediatrician visit periodically can expand the scope of care to patients and support those healthcare professionals already on the ground.
6) Extra Support During Seasonal Patient Surges
Pediatric patient volumes aren’t static – they often spike seasonally (for instance, during winter flu and RSV season or summer injury season). Locum tenens pediatricians give hospitals and clinics a flexible, on-demand way to scale up the workforce for these surges.
Take winter respiratory illnesses: influenza and RSV can flood pediatric clinics and hospitals with coughing, wheezing children. In late 2022, for example, nearly three-quarters of pediatric hospital beds were occupied nationwide during an early surge of RSV and flu.
By bringing in locum tenens pediatricians, healthcare systems can open additional clinic hours, expand pediatric ER coverage, or staff pop-up urgent care sites to handle the overflow of patients. This specialized care support is temporary – exactly for the duration of the surge – ensuring that when patient volume returns to normal, the hospital isn’t overstaffed.
Even outpatient practices see seasonal swings (like back-to-school physicals or allergy seasons) where a locum provider for a few weeks can mean the difference between turning patients away and accommodating the community’s needs.
To prepare for surges, analyze your patient visit data to anticipate busy periods (e.g. a 20% rise in visits each January). Reach out to staffing agencies a couple of months in advance to line up locum tenens coverage for those periods.
By planning ahead for temporary assignments during known surges, you’ll have your locum pediatricians credentialed and ready to jump in – keeping wait times down and patient satisfaction up when the rush hits.
7) Access to Skilled and Experienced Pediatricians
One of the numerous benefits of locum tenens is the depth of experience many of these physicians bring. Quite often, locum tenens pediatricians are medical providers in mid or late career who have amassed years of clinical know-how.
Some are semi-retired pediatricians or academic specialists who choose locum work to stay active professionally. In fact, surveys show that 71% of locum tenens physicians are over 50 years old, and 44% are over 60. And here’s a closer look at the wealth of experience locum tenens bring to the table:
By hiring a locum tenens pediatrician, your facility might gain access to a doctor who has, say, 30 years of pediatric clinical experience, possibly including subspecialty training or diverse practice environments. They can manage complex cases confidently and often serve as mentors to your junior staff.
For example, an experienced locum pediatrician working in your neonatal ICU for a month can share insights on neonatal ventilation management or introduce a best practice from another healthcare system they’ve worked in.
This cross-pollination of expertise elevates care quality. Additionally, if your region lacks a certain pediatric subspecialist, you can use locum tenens positions to bring in that expertise on a part-time basis – such as a locum pediatric neurologist who holds monthly clinics at your hospital, offering specialized care that otherwise would be unavailable locally.
8) Flexible Way to Expand Pediatric Services
For healthcare organizations looking to grow or pilot new services, locum tenens pediatricians offer a low-risk, flexible solution to “staff up” temporarily and evaluate demand. Instead of immediately committing to another permanent position (with all the long-term costs), a hospital can use a locum tenens physician to test the waters when expanding pediatric offerings.
For instance, if a hospital considers opening a pediatric urgent care or extending weekend clinic hours, they can bring in locum tenens providers to cover those shifts initially. This trial run will show if patient volume justifies a permanent hire. It also allows the facility to offer more medical services quickly – you’re not waiting months to recruit before launching the service.
Locums are equally useful for expanding into new geographic markets or practice settings; a children’s hospital network could station a locum pediatrician one day a week at a remote clinic to gauge community response before building a permanent program there. Because locum tenens assignments can be as short as needed, the organization can scale staffing up or down in real-time.
Healthcare industry trends underscore this benefit – many facilities use locums not just in emergencies but as a core part of strategic growth.According to Chris Franklin, President of LocumTenens.com,
“The role of locum tenens has evolved from an option that in the past was used during times of crisis to now a foundational part of a healthcare organization’s strategic business model.”
9) Faster Credentialing and Fewer Administrative Burdens
Bringing a new physician on board full-time can involve considerable administrative effort – state licensing, hospital credentialing, payer enrollment, and heaps of paperwork. Locum tenens hiring can simplify and accelerate these steps.
Why? Because locum agencies and experienced locum providers often have infrastructure in place to streamline credentialing. For one, many states are part of the Interstate Medical Licensure Compact, which can reduce the time to obtain a new medical license from months to just weeks for qualified physicians.
This means a locum tenens pediatrician licensed in one state can rapidly get licensed in another state through an expedited process – a big plus if your facility is in a state with the Compact. Additionally, staffing agencies maintain credentialing documents for their physicians and even pre-credential them internally.
A locum tenens agency’s credentialing team will handle primary source verification of the physician’s qualifications and often pre-fill hospital privilege applications. In fact, once a doctor is credentialed with an agency, that approval is valid for two years and can be reused for multiple facilities, making subsequent assignments even quicker.
From the hospital’s perspective, this translates to fewer bureaucratic hurdles – you still need to grant privileges, but much of the legwork (calls to previous employers, reference checks, license verification) is done by the agency.
Administrative burdens like payroll, benefits management, and malpractice insurance are also taken off your plate since the locum provider is typically an independent contractor paid through the agency. Your HR and medical staff office can thus focus on permanent staff and overall operations.
Integrating Locum Tenens Physicians Into Your Organization
Successfully incorporating a locum tenens pediatrician into your healthcare team requires thoughtful onboarding and communication, but when done right, it’s very smooth.
Start by preparing your staff for the locum’s arrival: explain the meaning of locum tenens (if they’re unfamiliar) and emphasize the locum’s credentials and role. Assign a point person – perhaps a lead nurse or another pediatrician – to welcome the locum on day one and serve as a go-to for questions about workflows or the electronic health record.
Provide a concise orientation: a tour of the clinic or unit, introductions to key colleagues, and a “cheat sheet” of important protocols (e.g. how to consult a specialist, transfer a patient, or the schedule of the day). Many organizations find that locum tenens physicians adapt quickly, especially if they’ve worked in similar practice environments.
In fact, surveys show locum providers are well-accepted: 96% of locum tenens doctors say they’re accepted by patients, 90% by colleagues, and 82% by administrators during assignments.
You can reinforce this by treating the locum as you would any new hire – include them in team huddles, invite them to staff lunches, and respect their medical judgment. Also clarify workflow specifics, like how referrals or follow-ups will be handled after the locum’s tenure, so there’s no confusion for patients.
Administratively, integrate them into scheduling and EHR systems with temporary access as needed, and ensure malpractice coverage details are sorted (usually the agency provides this). By the time they see their first patient, the locum should feel empowered to deliver care confidently under your roof.
Insider tip: Solicit feedback from both the locum and your permanent staff after the first few days. This can reveal integration pain points (maybe the locum wasn’t given log-in credentials initially, or a nurse wasn’t aware the doctor was temporary).
A quick huddle to address these issues will fine-tune the process. Additionally, if you find a fantastic locum tenens pediatrician, consider requesting them again for future locum tenens opportunities – building a relationship with a locum who knows your healthcare setting means even faster, easier integration the next time you need help.
Hire Locum Tenens Pediatricians with Confidence
Each of these benefits showcases how locum tenens pediatricians can be a strategic asset for hospitals and clinics.
By thoughtfully leveraging temporary pediatric experts, healthcare organizations can solve immediate staffing problems while also strengthening patient care, supporting their full-time providers, and achieving organizational goals without skipping a beat.
Whether it’s ensuring no child’s care is delayed during a physician’s absence or rapidly expanding services to meet community demand, locum tenens roles provide numerous benefits that go far beyond just “filling a slot” – they help foster resilient, high-quality pediatric care delivery in today’s dynamic healthcare industry.
